Belly Buttons

I invite you to try this

I touched my belly button

And met my great, great grandmother

Felt my mother’s pulse as plain as yesterday and tomorrow

I am here she whispered

We are all here with you

This is not his story

This is our continuum

No wonder men seek permanence in possessions

In places

In placards and peace treaties

Women need none of these things

We own our universal now-ness

Carrying our divinity

In cord blood

And belly buttons

COPYRIGHT 06/04/26

Trish Bender

Footnote: It is interesting to note that there is no current, scientific proof of the belly button retaining any special properties attributed to the mother. After birth, all umbilical blood vessels, that once carried cells back and forth between mother and child, close and eventually become fibrous scar tissue.

While the mother can retain a small number of cells from her child throughout her body, and vice versa, the umbilical cord does not.

However, as the field of quantum physics continues to explore entanglement theory, where split and separated molecules will respond in tandem, there may come a day where the connection between mother and child is proven to be true, as so many already believe. This is the inner knowing that poets and philosophers have pondered for millennia.